Why can’t we all get along?

I’m not ready to concede the possibility that God and evolution endowed us with reason just to make us better equipped to win an argument in favor of, say, cutting $500 million from Medicaid funding or the “right” to unusually generous taxpayer-funded health and pension benefits — quite aside from whether these are actually good ideas or not.

And I was able to find some proof last week that even the most left- and right-wing among us can conceive of why approximately half the voters in the state don’t vote as they do, even as it’s difficult for them to conceive of how their opponents’ policies might do the state good.

As evidence that we might be able to get along, he quotes me.

James Wigderson, a Waukesha-based conservative blogger, said a person’s associations and surroundings probably matter more in choosing his or her politics than any ingrained political philosophy, although he maintained the public is largely conservative by virtue of a common desire to be left alone by the government.

Still, “I don’t think it’s a question of intelligence,” he said. “I’ve met some very smart people on both sides, and some very dumb people on both sides.”

The problem with “why can’t we all get along” is that it assumes that all viewpoints are valid. They’re not. If I were to assert that the sun revolves around the earth, I would be wrong. NAMBLA is wrong. Reasonable people can disagree about most things, but that presumes that two disagreeing people honor the other’s right to have a different opinion. (How many from Da Union respect the Tea Party’s opinions whether or not they disagree with them? We’ve seen that answer the past few months, haven’t we?)

I don’t care if it was 40 hours or 60 hours, any reasonable observer wouldn’t have called it discussion or debate when one side didn’t participate. Similarly, a reasonable person would say the more serious the issue, the greater the need for extended consideration of the issues. Who knows who even wrote the bill? It sprang forth from Walker’s forehead? At the moment it was brought forth, even Big Fitz claimed he didn’t know what was in it.

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